Sunday, June 29, 2008

Did I hear that right?

When I overheard this conversation last week on the shuttle to my building from the Metro, I almost couldn't believe my ears. I didn't think people actually talked like this outside the movies. But apparently somebody does.

Here are the snippets of the phone conversation. The names won't really make much sense because I wasn't actually taking notes. I typed this up when I got to my computer at work. It was just too priceless not to record. But it's what I overheard as another passenger, a young professional black man, was talking on his cell phone one morning.

So Storm and Quick are at the girl’s crib. They bounce from the crib to go to the store. To the PNC to localize it for ye.
Then Quick’s cell phone rings but he duzn’t hear anybody talkin’. It sounds like scuffling, like muffled movement. And then he hears this girl’s voice saying, ‘they’re fightin.’
So they bounce from the store and head back to his crib. They go up to the dude’s crib, up to his apartment. And there’s big guy on top of Quick….beatin’ him. So of course he jumps in ‘cause that’s his people.

They break it up or whatever and a course the police are called. And this dude’s arrested and charged with assault and robbery and sumthin else.

But it turns out that this dude was fightin’ with his girl and the fight got physical. Then she left the crib to go to this dude’s and then Quick followed her and kicked in the dude’s door. So the big dude was just defending his crib. This guy kicked down his door!

So it’s just ridiculous.

2 comments:

Kate said...

Yes, Stephanie, after working in the ghetto of Baltimore for 3 years I can attest to the frequency and the normalcy of this quality of conversation. sigh. It never fails to amaze me, especially since a lot of people who speak like this then walk into professional jobs where they prove themselves to be highly intelligent. Others talk like this all the time.

Stephanie said...

Ha! Kate, I'm sure you did get an earful! And that's precisely what struck me about this conversation -- this young guy, shirt, tie, works for some tech company on the 10th floor of my building -- and here he is talking like he's in the 'hood. It was just crazy!